Without tuning plates, I rotate the meat about once every hour. I flip pork butt if I've removed the fat cap, if not, I want that fat cap on bottom to protect the meat. When I used plates, I left a large gap between the baffle and the first plate, about 4 to 5 inches.
I use the left half of the grate almost entirely.
I started cooking with the Brazos using digital temps with my Smoke. But I also put two Tel-Trus in both ends of the cook chamber door. Rarely have the digital temps ever agreed with the analog. They seem to always run hotter. And I quit trying to manage my fire by the digital temps, they just react too fast, which caused me to react too fast and create wild temp swings. I started using the TelTru on the stack end of the door and try to keep the temps within 25* range.
Kindling Cracker is best thing since sliced bread. I take a 14 to 16" split, and split it again with the Cracker, then cut it in half. I've found 7 to 8" splits about as round as a beer can or a little less, to be the right size. I have to feed them more often, but I get less temp swing. On a WSM, we control temp by adjusting air flow, on an offset temp is adjusted by the size of the fire.
On using digital temps, I will run a Smoke probe just so I can record temps using Gateway. Wednesday, I smoked whole spare ribs and I put a digital probe right in front of the exhaust port. At about 2:15 I rearranged the ribs to run crossways on the grate. The digital temp dropped while the analog temps were the same. I have no explanation as to why, but I was not cooking at 300+ degree, I finished them in the oven, took a total of 6 hours.
